Cormac McCarthy, who died on Tuesday at the age of 89, was renowned for stark and violent novels of the American South and West that were distinguished by a merciless vision and nearly biblical prose. Jerome Charyn’s description of “Suttree,” in The Times’s 1979 review, could well be about any of McCarthy’s novels. “It is personal and tough, without that boring neatness and desire for resolution that you can get in any well-made novel. Cormac McCarthy has little mercy to spare, for his characters or himself. … ‘Suttree’ is like a good, long scream in the ear.”These seven novels comprise the best of McCarthy’s work.

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Persons: Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, Jerome Charyn’s, “, Charyn, … Locations: American, West